


Freeing Five

by GeorgeFredSlytherin



Series: Pictures [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Five heals, Gen, I really like Five, Just two random moments, Klaus helps a lot, Seriously got to stop crying, even though he has no idea what he's doing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 02:52:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19242349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeorgeFredSlytherin/pseuds/GeorgeFredSlytherin
Summary: Five stops holding on. Just two random Five shots I needed.





	Freeing Five

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Cauterize](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/87308) by Lady Altair. 



> Again, this is based off of Cauterize by Lady Altair.

Time passes, and Klaus takes more pictures, but the best days are when he sees someone just be. He’s passing by Five’s room when he sees his brother. He’s staring – just staring – at the wall, and for a moment Klaus freaks out because PTSD and trauma and is his brother hurting? Then he sees the piece of chalk, and everything clicks.  
Five still writes on his walls. Calculation after calculation, equations to help him save the world. After they had stopped the apocalypse, most of the siblings had assumed he would stop. He hadn’t. Luther had wanted to have an intervention. Everyone else agreed, even Diego, but this one was important, Klaus knew, so he stood his ground and refused to let his siblings anywhere near his brother. Even now they occasionally ask him why. He can’t exactly tell them that he knows. He knows what his brother is going through. He knows what it is to look back at a horrible past – drugs and Vietnam and a camera in his room – and have to learn to live. So Klaus had stood his ground. Their brother, he had explained, needed time to heal. When the time was right, they would address the issue.  
Now Five is staring up at the walls around him, the chalk held loosely in his hand. As Klaus watches, the chalk falls. Is it time? He asks his brother. Five looks up at him, eyes full, and nods. Klaus spends the next ten minutes on the phone with all his siblings. "Allison get down here. Yes it’s important. Diego, bring some paint." To Five, "What color?" Five shakes his head and tells him to choose. He considers for a second, before picking a light green.  
Then his siblings are all there and Five is standing as close to Klaus as he can without clutching him. Allison asks why they are here, and when Five says nothing, Klaus announces that, "Our littlest oldest brother has decided to paint his room!" There’s shock as they all realize what that means and then they’re all upstairs, readying paintbrushes and changing into trash clothing.  
There is an unspoken agreement among the siblings that Five will mark the wall first. None of them, they think, could ever take this away from him. Klaus pulls out his camera – he’d managed to snag it in the chaos – and readies for the shot. When Five makes the first mark across his many equations, Klaus snaps a picture, but it is the one right after that he likes more. Five, previously tense, relaxes. He leans against the wall, a small smile on his lips. In that moment, there is no worrying. Five lets go, and is free.  
Klaus adds the pictures to his collection. He might need a new box.

Five is eighteen when Klaus gets the idea. It’s a horrible idea, and he won’t won’t won’t do it, except that Ben keeps bugging him, and he’s so annoying – When Klaus wakes up to Five’s screaming for the third night in a row, he knows it has to be done. He grabs his camera and runs to Five’s room.  
He will not document a panic attack. It has always been a rock hard rule. These are theirs and theirs alone, and even though Klaus plans on keeping his pictures to himself, looking at something like that is an invasion of privacy. He leaves his camera the second he gets in the room, and holds Five till he calms down.  
When Five fully wakes, he tries to get away. Klaus has to voice his thoughts now, or he never will. "You need to talk about it." He says. "Or you never will." Five stares at him for a long time. Finally, he nods. Klaus turns on the camera, making sure it’s in full view. He’s not sure why Five doesn’t protest, but he doesn’t. Instead, he starts talking.  
Death. Murder. Innocent lives lost. – For the greater good? Did intentions matter? – Five starts in a robotic voice. He tries to list all the dead. He can’t. Eventually his voice cracks. "I’m a monster," he says at the end of the story, "I don’t even think I can feel anymore." Klaus stops the camera – it had been recording this time – and shows Five the footage. He shows him how his face had started out blank, how, as the story progressed, he had broken, and had begun to cry. He’s crying now.  
"You’re not a monster." He says. "You still feel, sometimes more deeply than the rest of us."  
Klaus gives Five some stills from the footage. Then he deletes it all. This is too private for his box, he knows. It is Five’s and Five’s alone.


End file.
